---------- Forwarded message ----------
Date: Wed, 9 Sep 1998 00:12:30 -0700 (PDT)
From: MichaelP <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
To: "unlikely.suspects": ;
Subject: J K Galbraith piece in the GUARDIAN-"The rich drive by"
The rich drive by
Forty years after the Affluent Society, the difference between rich
and poor has grown far greater
By J K Galbraith
The Guardian (london) Wednesday September 9, 1998
It is now 40 years, and something more, since I surveyed the scene in
the economically advanced countries, especially the United States, and
wrote The Affluent Society.
In a much-quoted passage, that I thought at the time was perhaps too
extravagant, I told of the family that took its modern, highly-styled
automobile out for a holiday. They went through streets and
countryside made hideous by commercial activity and commercial art.
They spent their evening in a public park replete with refuse and
disorder, and dined on delicately packaged food from an expensive,
portable refrigerator.
So it seemed 40 years ago; in the time that has elapsed the contrast
between needed public services and affluent private consumption has
become much greater. Every day the press, radio and television
proclaim the abundant production of goods and the need for more money
for education, public works and the desolate condition of the poor in
the great cities. Clearly affluence in the advanced countries is still
a highly unequal thing. All this, were I writing now, I would still
emphasise. I would especially stress the continuing unhappy position
of the poor. This, if anything, is more evident now.
Then in the United States it was the problem of southern plantation
agriculture and the hills and hollows of the rural Appalachian
Plateau. Now it is the problem of the great metropolis. There is
another contrast. Were I writing now, I would give emphasis to the
depressing difference in well-being between the affluent world and the
less fortunate countries - mainly the post-colonial world. The rich
countries have their rich and poor. The world has its rich and poor
nations.
The problem is not economics; it goes back to a far deeper part of
human nature. As people become fortunate in their personal well-being,
and as countries become similarly fortunate, there is a common
tendency to ignore the poor, or to develop some rationalisation for
the good fortune of the fortunate. Responsibility is assigned to the
poor themselves. Given their personal disposition and moral tone, they
are meant to be poor. Poverty is both inevitable and, in some measure,
deserved. The fortunate individuals and countries enjoy their
well-being without the burden of conscience, without a troublesome
sense of responsibility.
This is something I did not recognise 40 years ago; it is a habit of
mind to which I would now attribute major responsibility. This is not,
of course, the full story. After the Second World War decolonisation,
an admirable step, nonetheless left a number of countries without
effective self-government. Nothing is so important for economic
development and the human condition as stable, reliable, competent and
honest government. This, in important parts of the world, is still
lacking. Nothing is so accepted in our times as respect for
sovereignty; nothing, on occasion so protects disorder, poverty and
hardship. Here I'm not suggesting an independent role for any one
country and certainly not for the United States. I do believe we need
a much stronger role for international action, including the United
Nations. We need to have a much larger sense of common responsibility
for those suffering from the weakness, corruption, disorder and
cruelty of bad government or none at all. Sovereignty, though it has
something close to religious status in modern political thought, must
not protect human despair. This may not be a popular point; popularity
is not always a test of needed intelligence.
So I take leave of my work of 40 years ago. I am not entirely
dissatisfied with it, but I do not exaggerate its role. Books may be
of some service to human understanding and action in their time. There
remains the possibility, even the probability, that they do more for
the self-esteem of the author than for the fate of the world.
Extracted from the 1998 UNDP Human Development report, published
today.
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